Last Saturday, February 2, the European Courier attended an event promoting “The Camp” - a book about the massacre in Srebrenica (Bosnia and Herzegovina), which is a compilation of testimonies of the victims, who survived the killings.
        

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History is subject to interpretation and different nations tend to understand history in different ways. This phenomenon can be seen, for example, in respect to Katyn massacre, which took place in 1940, when around 20 thousand of Polish people constituting country’s intelligentsia were

slaughtered by Soviet forces to prevent potential resistance movement to Soviet occupation of the country. Today, Poland and Russia, interpret this event in completely different ways, with Russia officially claiming no involvement. Well, Srebrenica is for Bosniaks, what Katyn is for Poles. There are many parallels between those two massacres. Both crimes can be described in terms of conflict of civilizations. In Katyn, Polish Catholics were slaughtered by Russia’s Orthodox Christians. In Srebrenica, Bosnian Muslims were exterminated by Serbian Orthodox Christians. Both killings had political purpose. Both were genocidal cleansing of the territory to eliminate an unwanted element of possible military resistance. And these both nations, Poles and Bosniaks, have not yet seen justice done and the families of the victims have not been compensated for their losses either.

Bosnia-Herzegovina is now in the nation-building process and many things need to be done to transform the country into a democratic entity where human and civil rights are secured and properly protected. Bosnia has no future but in the European Union. It is also a big, historical challenge for the Union to absorb the Balkan states into its institutions. One may risk a statement that there will never be peace in Europe if there is no peace in the Balkans. Admission of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia, into the EU, is from the strategic point of view, as important as admission of Turkey or Ukraine.

This event wasn’t about magnifying accusations against Bosnian Serbs and Belgrade, but about remembering of the past and looking toward reconciliation in the future. While Bosniaks need to commemorate their past, pay tribute to the victims and request justice, they want to cooperate with moderate and progressive forces in the region to eliminate nationalism, chauvinism and fascism. Their approach is insightful as well as accurate. And once again, one may draw a parallel between Poland and Bosnia. In 1939 fascist Germany invaded Poland and executed millions of people, including 5 million Jews. Today, however, both nations have moved on and live in peace, cooperate with each other and do business with each other. In the 90's, Germany was the most vocal advocate of Poland’s membership in the European Union, which ever since enormously benefitted my country. Let’s hope the same for Bosnia and Serbia.

The event offered real testimonies of genocide survivors. It

was moving and compelling experience. Professor Selma

Leydesdorff, a recognized historian of genocide from the University of Amsterdam, and also the editor of the book,

quoted fragments of the interviews she did with survivors from Srebrenica. She described a scene when Serbian soldiers came into a Muslim house to take a man - a father and a husband - to execute him. She pictured the last moments of that family together, the man saying good bye to all his children and his

wife, while all of them knew that it was the last time they were seeing each other, the last time they were together.

Mr. Muhamed Sacirbey, former minister of foreign affairs of BiH at the time of the Srebrenica massacre, spoke about his diplomatic experience and struggle to stop the genocide. After all, he stressed two things. The first one was the importance of bringing war criminals like Karadzic and Mladic to justice. The second one, the advancement of reconciliation process in the region. Bosnia-Herzegovina needs to have friendly relations with Serbia and other neighbors and help them to combat nationalist forces in the region to prevent ethnical cleansings in the future. For every one evil thing done by a Serb to a Bosniak, all Bosniaks should think about two good things the Serbs did to them as well. Mr. Sacirbey thanked the Jewish community in America, which was very supportive and helpful in uncovering the crimes during the genocide in Bosnia and bringing them into public attention. Furthermore, Mr. Sacirbey called upon Bosnian community to work constructively to bring world’s attention to the ongoing genocide in Darfur, for the victims of one genocide have a moral obligation to do whatever in their power to prevent any more genocides from happening, even though they may be taking place in distant parts of the globe.

Sebastian Aulich